Full Comment - What Doug Ford has that Jason Kenney doesn’t

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00:01:58.720 The Ontario election has been a bit of a snooze in many respects.

00:02:13.500 There really haven't been many issues that the parties have fiercely battled over.

00:02:17.200 And the polls have remained the same throughout, with progressive conservative Doug Ford expected to win re-election, most likely with a majority government.

00:02:24.760 But underneath that, there are some interesting things going on that need to be unpacked.

00:02:29.160 Ford has managed to bring on the sorts of union endorsements that we used to think of being typically aligned with the NDP.

00:02:34.800 What's happening there?

00:02:36.280 Ontario also had some of the strictest and longest lockdowns of the past two years compared to similar jurisdictions.

00:02:41.940 How has that changed the way Ontarians think of their relationship to government and therefore vote?

00:02:46.660 Oh, and why didn't grassroots conservatives in Ontario at least try to give Ford a hard time or give them the boot over this stuff like they recently did with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney?

00:02:55.800 What's the difference there?

00:02:57.040 And why is it that the main opposition parties, the NDP and Liberals, have just been so painfully lackluster?

00:03:03.060 Why did they fail to bring their A-game?

00:03:05.720 Today's guest is Hamish Marshall.

00:03:07.440 He worked as research director for Angus Reid Public Opinion.

00:03:10.320 He's now a partner of the firm One Persuasion, and he's managed a number of political campaigns, including being national campaign manager for the federal conservatives in the 2019 election.

00:03:19.280 He joins us now.

00:03:19.980 Hey, Hamish.

00:03:20.940 Thanks for stopping by.

00:03:22.160 My pleasure, Anthony.

00:03:23.540 Yeah, I always hate to tee up something by saying, okay, we're now going to talk about something uneventful.

00:03:29.100 But, you know, Seinfeld's show about nothing, it was, I guess, one of the top-rated shows of its time.

00:03:33.380 So we can turn around and say there is actually a lot going on here beneath the main plot.

00:03:37.820 There's a lot of interesting subplots.

00:03:39.580 But before we get into all of those subplots, I mean, what do you make of this fact?

00:03:43.080 I'm just kind of surprised after all this, the strong passions and anti-Ford stuff over the past few years from liberals, NDP, and just all the crazy things that have happened in our world in the lives of past two years, that this election has proven to be something of lesser substance than I think a lot of us were expecting.

00:04:01.040 You know, it's really remarkable.

00:04:02.880 I mean, I was thinking about this the other day.

00:04:05.420 You know, every election we ever sit through, we have people telling us nonstop, this is the most important election in a generation.

00:04:11.680 I mean, it's obviously not true because it can't be true of every election.

00:04:17.540 But I've literally heard nobody say that this time.

00:04:19.400 No one's even trying to make that statement.

00:04:22.500 And, you know, the polls are just flat.

00:04:24.820 It's just incredible.

00:04:25.860 You know, the Conservatives are consistently 8, 10, 12 points ahead.

00:04:29.500 It kind of bumps around a little bit like that, but it's pretty flat.

00:04:33.540 There's nothing going on.

00:04:34.960 And I think a lot of it comes down to really two things.

00:04:39.780 One is coming out of the pandemic, a desire for stability for Ontarians, a desire to sort of return to normality, a kind of a feeling of like, let's change everything, let's change government, doesn't really exist.

00:04:54.020 I think the pandemic played a big part of that.

00:04:56.120 And I think the other big issue is just the complete incompetence of the Liberals and NDP and their inability to capitalize on any anti-Ford feeling out there.

00:05:06.220 You know, it's such a good point because I've written columns saying we need inquiries and commissions into the COVID stuff.

00:05:12.920 I think it's remarkable that one of the reasons Ontario had such severe lockdowns was our health system is just not what it's been chalked up to be over the past however many years.

00:05:21.820 So, you know, we really need to have these conversations.

00:05:23.940 But then to your point, people are frustrated.

00:05:26.100 I'm a big fan of the band The Eagles.

00:05:27.840 There's this great documentary out on them.

00:05:29.500 I think it's still up on Netflix or Amazon or whatever.

00:05:31.280 And there's a scene where they talk about how their song, Take It Easy, it was their first big hit.

00:05:35.740 And it became a hit, I think in part, they said, because there's the Vietnam War, there's all this crazy stuff going on at Watergate, and people just wanted to take it easy.

00:05:44.980 Like they didn't actually want to be at each other's throats anymore.

00:05:48.560 I think that's a huge part of it.

00:05:50.340 I think people are just, they're fed up, they're tired, the weather is getting nicer.

00:05:54.940 People just want things to go smoothly into the next few months.

00:05:59.660 And look, there's definitely some people who are pissed off and mad and want to change in government.

00:06:04.680 But there's not enough of them right now.

00:06:07.640 Yeah, how would you describe the focuses of the different parties?

00:06:11.560 I mean, I think it's fair to say the Ford government's focus, they're really talking about the economy.

00:06:16.880 They're talking about infrastructure, those sort of core governance things, it seems.

00:06:21.400 Yeah, I mean, they've certainly got some bells and whistles that you're right.

00:06:24.120 They're talking a lot of infrastructure.

00:06:25.280 We hear a lot about the 413, the Bradford Bypass, some of these big projects, which are nice, tangible things to campaign on.

00:06:33.700 But the really core message is steady as she goes.

00:06:37.740 It's things are fine, you want things to be fine, and we're the party that isn't going to shake stuff up.

00:06:44.260 Things are going to be okay.

00:06:45.820 And the message of a fairly radical change being pushed by the others is just not what Ontarians are looking for right now.

00:06:54.740 Whether or not individuals have quibbles with certain parts of the Ford agenda and some of the things they've done or haven't done,

00:07:02.200 we're in this situation where people are saying, you know, things are, sorry, enough people are saying things are fine.

00:07:08.860 And why would we mess with that?

00:07:11.780 Why would we change everything?

00:07:13.520 We just want everything to be normal and quiet.

00:07:16.720 I want to spend the summer with my kids.

00:07:18.820 I want things to keep going.

00:07:20.420 It's going to be okay.

00:07:22.420 Is there also something to be said for the fact that maybe the Ford government isn't as conservative and far right and what have you as liberal and NDP voices would like you to believe,

00:07:32.300 that they're a relatively centrist party, that they're kind of in line with Ontarians?

00:07:35.760 Yeah, I don't, I don't think there's a radical agenda for change.

00:07:39.620 This isn't the common sense revolution of 1995, right?

00:07:43.800 There's a very much like the message is steady as she goes and you can't have a steady as she goes government that is doing radical things for left or right.

00:07:53.460 Like it's just, those things don't fit.

00:07:54.800 And they, I think this government really, really understands their value proposition and their lane, which is telling people that we're going to manage things in a competent, perhaps not super exciting way.

00:08:06.180 And that's just fine.

00:08:08.960 And, and, and by, by not trying to shake it up, that's one of the reasons we're not seeing, you know, big policy hand grenades or trying to do something, you know, like the budget that we had in the spring.

00:08:19.940 And it's a perfectly good budget, but it's not, you know, it's not the most exciting Ontario budget of my lifetime.

00:08:25.260 And, but that's not, that's, that's, that's not a bug.

00:08:27.940 That's a feature.

00:08:29.040 Well, to your point about how the election has had a lot of nothing burger elements to it.

00:08:32.460 I remember budget day coming out and of course for media, they treat it as a big day.

00:08:36.620 It's like the Royal wedding for them.

00:08:37.780 And they go into the lockup or the virtual lockup and then they get their stories ready.

00:08:41.540 And then 4 PM or whatever, it all comes out and here's all the big new fangled things.

00:08:45.660 And this was like such a fizzle.

00:08:47.420 They were like, oh, they're, I guess they're doing a bit of infrastructure, some hospitals, some schools.

00:08:51.960 And then, oh, they've actually got a lot of deficit kind of just like, like before during COVID times.

00:08:57.240 Oh, what, what, how do we, how do we spin this?

00:08:59.940 How do we frame this?

00:09:00.780 And they just kind of didn't.

00:09:03.440 Yeah.

00:09:04.060 But as I said, I think that, I think the, the Ford government really understands where the mood of, of the voters they have and the voters they need are right now and are delivering that sort of middle of the road government.

00:09:18.440 That's not trying, it's not swinging for the fences, but that's okay.

00:09:21.920 Like that, that's, that's what people want.

00:09:23.540 People don't want overreach right now and they're not getting it.

00:09:26.500 Hamish, are a lot of people going to vote on June 2nd?

00:09:29.800 Is there going to be strong voter turnout?

00:09:32.920 I, I, I think the turnout, voter turnout is going to be lower.

00:09:37.000 You know, provincial voter turnout is always generally lower than what we see federally.

00:09:42.000 And the most, the best predictor of whether turnout is going to be up or down in an election is whether or not there's strong feeling of time for a change.

00:09:50.160 When, when, when, when, when that's true, whether it's conservatives or liberals or NDP or anybody in power, when a government's in power and people want to throw them out, people who are mad, who don't normally vote, who are engaged in the system.

00:10:01.180 This is especially true in provincial elections.

00:10:02.740 turn out and vote, you know, the people who vote one election in three or whatever.

00:10:08.440 This election, they're, that strong, uh, uh, get rid of them feeling doesn't exist.

00:10:14.020 And as a result, I think turnout is going to be lower.

00:10:17.220 Now, Hamish, I know there was a lot of talk in the, I guess, 2019 election federally,

00:10:21.600 which you're very familiar with, and even the past federal election in 2021, that Justin

00:10:26.740 Trudeau had experienced a long five years, a long four years, however long it was, the

00:10:31.740 idea that leaders are sort of wearing out their welcome and that the number of, say,

00:10:35.340 scandals that the federal liberals had had was longer than you may typically have during

00:10:39.220 a first term or longer than Jean Chrétien or Stephen Harper had in their first term,

00:10:42.920 and that this is going to wear on him.

00:10:44.400 And I think it's true.

00:10:45.360 It just didn't prove such that it resulted in a change in government.

00:10:49.660 And I feel like these COVID years, past years, man, that's been a long couple of years.

00:10:53.880 I mean, this has been a long four-year term for Doug Ford.

00:10:56.940 And he was on television every day telling you, you know, where you could and couldn't

00:11:00.000 stand.

00:11:00.540 I mean, talk about overexposure for him.

00:11:02.540 But it seems like he hasn't worn that too much.

00:11:06.520 No, I mean, I think, and he's, you know, he's not, he's, he's only doing a limited number

00:11:12.000 of events in the campaign.

00:11:15.680 He's not out doing media.

00:11:16.980 I will say, just so every listener knows, we have put out requests for all three of the

00:11:20.760 major leaders.

00:11:21.280 And we were very wanting to get them on the program.

00:11:25.340 And Doug Ford, Andrew Horvath, Stephen Del Duca, they would not, they did not agree to

00:11:30.060 come on this program.

00:11:30.760 And I don't think I'm particularly unique.

00:11:32.800 I think they're not really doing media, hardly any of them.

00:11:34.920 Yeah, but I think the pandemic sort of serves as two resets.

00:11:40.380 Look, it's an entirely unique phenomenon in Canadian politics, obviously.

00:11:44.880 But there's sort of two resets in it.

00:11:46.780 One was once the pandemic started, it was a big reset, both politically, we saw Trudeau's

00:11:51.540 numbers move federally.

00:11:52.600 We saw Ford's numbers move a lot at the provincial level as well.

00:11:56.820 There's a whole change when things started.

00:11:58.680 And people forgot about what had gone on before.

00:12:00.620 And, you know, the Ford government had a pretty bumpy first year.

00:12:04.360 And that was just all forgotten.

00:12:05.580 We'll focus on the pandemic.

00:12:07.260 Now that the pandemic's over, it's almost kind of another reset again, and a feeling of

00:12:11.020 let's get back to just things being normal, whatever that means to different folks.

00:12:16.740 But so they've sort of had two resets.

00:12:20.160 And that's, I think, done very well.

00:12:21.740 And the pandemic, people generally think that the Ford government did a decent job on the

00:12:26.880 pandemic handling.

00:12:27.760 Might be certain aspects that they'd like or don't like.

00:12:30.860 But the broad consensus is that the Ontario government did a decent job.

00:12:36.520 So there is an anger coming out of that, except for amongst the people who are, you know,

00:12:41.220 there's definitely a small section of people who are very, very mad about the lockdowns.

00:12:45.300 And there's a section of people on the left who are just mad at anything Ford does.

00:12:50.000 But we end up in this situation where now there's sort of this new reset, moving forward,

00:12:54.720 where there's just this feeling, as I said, if people just want, let's just move forward.

00:12:58.460 Let's not do anything to endanger, you know, what we've done, you know, moving out of the

00:13:02.780 pandemic.

00:13:03.220 We sure as hell don't want to go back there.

00:13:04.900 But let's just move forward.

00:13:06.300 And things are kind of okay.

00:13:09.140 And so the government's really been able to profit from that, right?

00:13:12.640 Number one, putting that rocky first year behind them.

00:13:15.460 And then two, putting, you know, some of the perhaps missteps in the campaign when there

00:13:20.760 was a backlash about locking down playgrounds and all that a little over a year ago.

00:13:24.660 That's all far enough from the rear view mirror as well.

00:13:27.980 Talking about the Trudeau factor, Justin Trudeau made a campaign style appearance with Doug Ford

00:13:34.280 just a few days before the writ was dropped at an announcement.

00:13:37.200 It wasn't a campaign event, of course, but they were making an announcement for something

00:13:41.080 that involved provincial and federal funding.

00:13:42.860 And they were standing there together at the podium.

00:13:45.080 And then a few days later, the election starts and Justin Trudeau is not going out on the

00:13:50.200 campaign trail for Stephen Del Duca.

00:13:52.540 I mean, what's going on there?

00:13:54.620 Well, like he's not going to, like Trudeau is a very canny political operator.

00:13:58.000 He doesn't want to spend political capital on people who aren't likely to win.

00:14:03.860 If he's going to go and engage in a full scale fight with the government of Ontario, which

00:14:07.980 is what would happen if he really started pulling out the stops to campaign against Ford,

00:14:13.640 that is a narrative that would consume politics, obviously, during the election, but probably

00:14:20.160 have effects afterwards.

00:14:22.320 And there's a price you pay for that, even if you, and since it looks very, very unlikely

00:14:27.980 that Del Duca would be successful, they're just saying that the price isn't worth the

00:14:32.680 potential upside of a Del Duca government, which is, I think, at this point with the polling,

00:14:37.040 you know, an extremely low chance that happened.

00:14:41.620 You mentioned a small contingent of people who are still very frustrated at Doug Ford for things

00:14:46.180 that he did during the pandemic.

00:14:48.980 Mostly, I'm talking about more conservative leaning people who did not like the lockdowns.

00:14:53.000 I know, to your point, there were people on the left who wanted even more and more

00:14:56.300 elaborate and onerous restrictions.

00:14:57.980 Back during the last federal election, which happened in the middle of the pandemic, we had

00:15:01.640 Maxime Bernier's PPC, that did pretty well, I think, for an upstart party, talked about

00:15:07.100 the crowds a lot, and they did get a lot of people out to their rallies.

00:15:10.000 And in some writings, I mean, they got over a thousand votes, not like the typical fringe

00:15:14.000 party vote of 2000, say.

00:15:15.920 And I think maybe they didn't do as well as Max had hoped, but they did all right.

00:15:20.540 Here in Ontario, what we have in this election is a new party called New Blue of Ontario.

00:15:25.060 And then we also have another party, an Ontario party.

00:15:29.500 It's called that.

00:15:30.460 It's called Ontario party.

00:15:31.420 The leader is Derek Sloan.

00:15:33.140 Are these parties at all going to make any similar headway to the degree the PPC did

00:15:37.580 federally?

00:15:38.680 So they're not being polled a lot.

00:15:40.140 Like pollsters, some pollsters ask about them, some don't.

00:15:43.320 General consensus of the polling is that when you add those two parties up, maybe it's four,

00:15:49.520 maybe it's 5%.

00:15:50.600 It doesn't all come from the PCs.

00:15:52.960 Some of it comes from other parties and traditional non-voters.

00:15:58.060 So I'm not sure what percentage it would take from the PCs.

00:16:00.420 Assuming these two parties combined get 5%, maybe that's three, two and a half, 3% come

00:16:06.060 from the PCs.

00:16:06.780 It's hard to say exactly.

00:16:09.920 Look, this could be the difference in some tight ridings.

00:16:13.580 And that's the question.

00:16:15.040 And the question is, if the PCs are 10 points ahead of the Liberals on Election Day, I don't

00:16:21.680 think these parties are going to make much of a difference.

00:16:24.100 If the PCs are 6% ahead of the Liberals on Election Day and some of these ridings that

00:16:30.940 they didn't think were going to be tight are now going to be tight and they're going to

00:16:33.180 be decided by 1,500 votes or 1,800 votes or 1,200 votes.

00:16:36.720 And these parties can pull off 1,000 votes or 1,500.

00:16:39.160 Then you could see some close fights going the wrong way for the Ford government and some

00:16:47.140 people unexpectedly losing.

00:16:48.860 Right now, the polling indicates that I think they're sort of above the danger zone.

00:16:53.800 But if we see a contraction in the next week and that lead shrinks from nine points or whatever

00:16:59.480 the average is today down to six points, that could start becoming a factor.

00:17:06.060 And then there's some ridings where unusual things can happen, right?

00:17:10.440 I mean, New Blue is interesting because they're much more organized than a party like this we're

00:17:15.260 used to, right?

00:17:15.960 They're running more candidates than the Liberals are, right?

00:17:20.800 And Ontario Party is running candidates in over 100 ridings as well.

00:17:25.660 Look, I live in Toronto Danforth, which is a safe NDP seat.

00:17:28.720 The only literature I've had in my door is a New Blue piece of lid.

00:17:31.720 I haven't had anything from any of the main parties.

00:17:33.740 I don't think that's going to change anything to Toronto Danforth.

00:17:37.460 I'm sure the NDP will hold the seat.

00:17:41.100 But it's a very, they're more organized and that has the potential to cause some problems

00:17:50.620 and some tight seats.

00:17:51.640 So you look at a seat like Cambridge, where the leader of the New Blue party, their only

00:17:56.900 MPP, Belinda Karahelios, the wife of the leader, is running for re-election as a New

00:18:02.240 candidate, having elected as a PC last time.

00:18:04.960 I don't think Ms. Karahelios is going to get 4% of the vote. 0.93

00:18:09.540 She's going to get a bigger percentage of the vote. 1.00

00:18:11.840 That's a seat with a bit of a Liberal tradition.

00:18:14.820 Is that split enough for the Liberals to win it or the PCs hold up against a stronger contender

00:18:19.540 like that?

00:18:20.560 Very, very hard to say.

00:18:21.940 But if, you know, we see a split in Cambridge and the PCs don't win it, I wouldn't be shocked.

00:18:27.720 They might just, but if the lead's enough, they'll be okay.

00:18:30.420 Same thing in a Chatham-Kent-Essex, where Rick Nichols is running for the Ontario party

00:18:36.720 as the incumbent.

00:18:37.240 I think he's more likely to, the PCs are much more likely to hold that seat there as well.

00:18:41.880 But there are, there could be a few funny effects, but I don't think it's going to

00:18:45.760 be enough across the province to make a huge difference.

00:18:49.000 We'll be back with more full comment with Hamish Marshall in just a moment.

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00:19:38.840 Hamish, I said in my lead-in, in the introduction, why didn't grassroots conservatives in Ontario

00:19:45.480 get as frustrated with Doug Ford as grassroots conservatives in Alberta did with Jason Kenney?

00:19:50.880 Now, that's only been a recent thing, of course.

00:19:53.040 It was not in the middle of the COVID lockdowns.

00:19:55.360 Jason Kenney getting the boot or, well, I guess just barely passing his leadership review

00:19:59.660 and then acknowledging that it was not enough.

00:20:01.440 And then saying, okay, I'm going to resign, sending that letter out there.

00:20:05.180 I think, and we did a whole episode on Kenney's leadership review prior to the vote happening.

00:20:11.380 And it was interesting to see that the party rules are very different between the UCP in Alberta

00:20:17.700 and the PC party here in Ontario.

00:20:19.200 And that I do remember when people were most passionate about the lockdowns

00:20:22.780 and there was division among grassroots members and, you know, staffers and a bit in caucus

00:20:28.160 that you didn't hear much about, but it was there.

00:20:30.000 People talking about, oh, can we even do these sorts of things?

00:20:32.300 And no, the rules didn't really allow for it in the same way the UCP rules did.

00:20:36.360 What's your take of why there was such a different response?

00:20:39.140 Because Kenney, of course, had even lighter COVID restrictions than Doug Ford did,

00:20:43.140 but the passions were even greater there.

00:20:45.060 Is it just because it's such a different political culture out there?

00:20:49.200 Yeah, I think it's both a different political culture in the province as a whole

00:20:52.380 and in the party specifically.

00:20:53.980 I think, like, the UCP and the Ontario PC party are very, very different culturally.

00:20:59.960 The UCP is, especially the Wild Rose side, which is a large chunk of their activist base,

00:21:08.380 is very, what's the right word I'm looking for, very non-deferential to leaders.

00:21:14.020 They very much feel that the leaders work for them, whereas the culture in the Ontario PC party

00:21:19.120 has been much, much more around deferential to the institution of the leader, whomever that is.

00:21:25.580 You know, we saw a caucus during the Patrick Brown days that was infuriated by many things

00:21:29.720 that Patrick Brown did, but didn't revolt against him,

00:21:32.380 simply because the culture of the party is, well, the leader sets the direction,

00:21:36.460 and that's the way it goes.

00:21:37.940 That said, and then in the province as a whole, Ontario was much more accepting of the lockdowns

00:21:46.280 as a whole than Alberta as a whole, especially outside of the big cities.

00:21:55.580 You know, rural Alberta was very, very incensed at the level of lockdowns in a way that,

00:22:02.080 while people were certainly, some people were certainly pissed off here in Ontario,

00:22:05.700 they weren't, the level of anger didn't rise to the same degree.

00:22:11.700 And I think that just goes to the political culture of the province as a whole.

00:22:15.700 And so Ford, you know, profited from that.

00:22:19.260 The other issue, I think, is that the Ontario PC party, you know, having won in 2018,

00:22:25.100 having lost for 15 years, was so happy to be back in power, to be back in government,

00:22:33.120 that the institutions in the party were saying, well, we're not going to mess this up.

00:22:38.060 You know, we've won.

00:22:39.180 Ford's the premier.

00:22:40.120 He's the guy who beat Kathleen Wynne.

00:22:41.660 He's the guy who brought us back into power.

00:22:43.700 Why on earth would we mess that up?

00:22:45.680 Whereas in Alberta, there's a sense amongst some of the party that it's better,

00:22:52.560 they would rather be, you know, being in power and not doing the things that are at the top of their priority list

00:22:58.380 is to them just as worthless as not being in power.

00:23:02.480 And that sentiment does not exist nearly as much in Ontario.

00:23:06.840 So I think it's primarily a cultural difference.

00:23:11.260 And also a, but also a timing difference.

00:23:14.960 You know, the UCP feels that it is the natural governing party of Alberta,

00:23:19.440 even though it's only been around for a few years, but it's the successor.

00:23:23.240 And therefore being in government is the default.

00:23:25.960 And therefore getting rid of an unpopular premier or a premier they feel is not doing the right thing

00:23:31.380 isn't going to cost them government.

00:23:33.120 Whereas in Ontario, the Ontario PC party is saying, we are not going to mess this up.

00:23:39.100 Well, hold on a second then.

00:23:40.100 Is the Ontario PC party its own brand?

00:23:43.600 Or is this whole government the Doug Ford brand right now?

00:23:46.340 Is he the entity?

00:23:48.140 I mean, look, I think the party is much more, I think, I think the government is much more around

00:23:54.520 Ford than the PCs, certainly than, than it's been in the past.

00:24:00.920 It certainly is the Doug Ford government is branded that way.

00:24:03.780 Everything they're doing is that way.

00:24:05.200 They're campaigning that way.

00:24:06.660 But the institutions of the party are very, very happy to be back in government

00:24:12.480 and are not interested in, in causing trouble beyond that.

00:24:16.460 Union endorsements.

00:24:18.460 Let's talk about those.

00:24:19.520 The PC party has, I believe, seven union endorsements.

00:24:23.160 Unions that typically would have endorsed the NDP or the Liberals.

00:24:26.000 And it's my understanding that all seven of these did not endorse the Ford government in 2018.

00:24:30.180 So this is a flip.

00:24:31.360 They've won them over.

00:24:32.300 I recently wrote a column about this phenomenon happening across North America.

00:24:36.240 It's not just an Ontario thing where the Democrats, for instance, have a lot of problems with the fact that they are losing blue collar support.

00:24:42.900 They are losing the working class. 1.00

00:24:44.420 A lot of hand wringing and, I guess, soul searching about what to do about all of that.

00:24:48.380 How do you see this playing out in Ontario?

00:24:50.460 Because it's quite something to see the NDP and the Liberals lose this support, lose these endorsements.

00:24:55.900 Yes, the NDP still has the teachers unions, public sector unions, but not the blue collar unions anymore.

00:25:03.360 Well, I think you nailed it.

00:25:04.480 I think the difference is that there's a huge division in the union world now between the public sector and the private sector unions.

00:25:10.640 And the private sector unions, a large chunk of working class voters and people typically represented by private sector unions are open to conservatives and often vote conservatives regardless of what their union bosses might tell them.

00:25:30.340 Mike Harris always did very well with private sector union members, if he didn't, if not with their union leadership.

00:25:37.500 So I think a couple of things are happening.

00:25:39.280 One is that this government has done a huge amount of genuine outreach to the unions to make them feel heard.

00:25:46.360 Whether they get everything they want or not is different, but they certainly don't make them feel antagonized.

00:25:50.820 I think the premier has done a lot of that.

00:25:52.220 I think Monty McNaughton, Minister of Labour, has done a phenomenal job at that and made it a priority and we're seeing a lot of the rewards from that.

00:26:07.260 And I think the unions also recognize that their membership is genuinely significantly aligned with the Ford government anyway.

00:26:15.080 So going against their membership too many times begins to cause problems for them, right?

00:26:21.160 So it was a reasonably easy thing to do.

00:26:23.240 The Ford government made it easy for them.

00:26:24.700 Ford spent a lot of time courting them, obviously made it a focus of McNaughton's.

00:26:29.400 And in fact, it was quite funny.

00:26:31.040 Press Progress, which is the media funded by the Broadband Institute, which wrote a big piece complaining that actually the Ford government was actually really anti-worker and how dare they do certain things that hurt unions.

00:26:43.420 And how dare they fund, you know, non-union projects as well.

00:26:48.120 And, you know, it's come to that.

00:26:51.100 Like they're just whining that unions aren't necessarily anti-Ford and that's the best they can do.

00:26:57.220 But this is...

00:26:57.660 They're just criticizing the unions for doing the endorsement rather than doing the soul searching to go, how can we win you back?

00:27:02.960 Right. That's exactly right.

00:27:04.040 And then on top of that, the blow to the Liberals and NDP by really the decline of what used to be called the Working Families Coalition, you know, the tens of millions of dollars that unions spent in the elections against Tim Hudak or even against John Tory was a huge factor in the Liberal wins in the last couple of decades.

00:27:24.660 And the Liberals didn't have to run the negative campaigns to demonize Conservative leaders because they had working families doing a lot of work for them.

00:27:34.840 So simply...

00:27:35.780 And why did that collapse?

00:27:37.500 Well, but I think a lot of...

00:27:39.560 I think a lot of the...

00:27:41.280 It collapsed because a lot of these private sector unions are saying, well, it's really not worth going to war with the Ford government.

00:27:46.240 But also, you know, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:27:50.560 You know, Del Duca and Horvath not looking like winners means, well, we're really going to spend all this money and confer all the ire of the government and then, you know, still probably lose.

00:28:02.860 I don't know if that's something we really want to do.

00:28:05.940 Right.

00:28:06.260 And let's talk about the Liberals and the NDP not looking like winners.

00:28:09.900 I mean, what is going on here?

00:28:11.980 It's really difficult for me to point out the things that they are promising to do, like the marquee pledges, whether it's consistent with their previous brands or some newfangled thing.

00:28:22.020 It's like, well, what do they want to do?

00:28:23.940 I can think of how Stephen Del Duca says, okay, we've got to add COVID immunizations onto the mandatory public school attendance list.

00:28:30.240 And you're like, okay, I don't know why you're still talking about this.

00:28:33.940 They really, I think, wanted to still talk about COVID and they timed it so poorly because people are just done.

00:28:39.500 I remember when the election first launched in, I guess, the first days of April, there were some campaign events that people were unmasked at them.

00:28:47.460 There were candidates unmasked, I think, indoors.

00:28:49.820 Oh, the horror.

00:28:50.840 And then they were infighting each other on social media and Liberal versus NDP or even some people within the Liberal family or within the NDP family were critiquing their own candidates.

00:28:59.800 I can't believe you risk, you know, killing all these seniors by going unmasked.

00:29:03.880 And you're like, oh, my God, this is so embarrassing.

00:29:06.760 Like, it was a total not ready for primetime.

00:29:09.020 And I wonder to what degree they just thought they could campaign on all COVID all the time.

00:29:13.600 Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways they've become sort of COVID fetishists, right?

00:29:16.660 Where they think the market was that Doug Ford wasn't strong enough on COVID, despite, as you pointed out, having some of the longest lockdowns on the continent.

00:29:25.700 And that's completely out of step where the majority of people in Ontario are.

00:29:31.540 Majority of people in Ontario think the government probably did a decent job on COVID.

00:29:34.860 And so this is just not a winning issue for them.

00:29:36.940 But it became sort of talismanic and a fetish for these parties, especially these opposition parties on the left for the last two years.

00:29:44.220 And they just couldn't give it up.

00:29:46.340 You know, I disagree a little bit on sort of the shiny policy.

00:29:49.300 I do think the one policy the Liberals have rolled out, and it's one of the reasons why I think the Liberals are ahead of the NDP,

00:29:53.720 it has cut through, and whether it's, you know, a good idea or not, it's a different story.

00:29:58.580 But is there a policy of a buck a ride on transit?

00:30:01.660 Easy to communicate, simple, easy to understand, appeals to people right across the spectrum.

00:30:10.060 You know, a lot of people use transit who are, you know, a variety of stages in their life.

00:30:14.840 I think that was a good policy on their perspective.

00:30:17.800 It worked.

00:30:18.560 It's cut through.

00:30:19.460 I can't name a single thing the NDP is promising.

00:30:22.260 Yeah, me too.

00:30:22.740 I do this for a living, and I can't.

00:30:25.200 Yeah, I mean, you know, the usual sort of grab bag of NDPs, you know, sort of soft left policy, nothing interesting, nothing inventive.

00:30:33.280 Hiring a lot of nurses, that's one. 1.00

00:30:34.920 It's like 10,000 nurses or something like that.

00:30:36.720 Great.

00:30:37.260 You know, like, that's fantastic, but not surprising at all, not news.

00:30:42.260 And they, you know, really, really see, you know, so liberals do have that policy for them, that buck a ride policy, which I think is interesting and certainly cut through a little bit.

00:30:54.340 And that's one of the reasons they pulled ahead of the NDP.

00:30:56.480 Is it winning people over, though?

00:30:57.620 Because I must credit voters that they are getting smarter in terms of they're like, yeah, it sounds nice, but how do you pay for it?

00:31:02.460 It's like when Doug Ford scrapped the vehicle registration fee, which I support getting rid of it.

00:31:06.700 But it was so obviously a vote-buying measure.

00:31:08.380 I think a lot of people were like, oh, okay, cool, but like, I don't know, I know you're buying my vote, so whatever kind of thing.

00:31:13.720 Yeah, I think, and this goes to the fundamental problem they have, right?

00:31:18.140 What the liberals and NDP had one job on this election.

00:31:22.400 Both of them had the same job, which was actually not to tear down Doug Ford.

00:31:26.140 Their job was to become the anti-Doug Ford rallying cry, to be the one champion so that everybody on the progressive side of the ledger knows,

00:31:35.560 if you don't like Doug Ford, you've got to vote for whether it's liberals or the NDP.

00:31:39.040 That was their job, was to kill the other one, to push the other party down into somewhere into the low teens or middle teens or wherever,

00:31:46.620 so that they could become, they could get themselves up into the mid-30s and fight for the government.

00:31:53.380 And they've both singularly failed to do this.

00:31:56.160 And we saw some squabbling, and it's funny, we've seen NDP, prominent NDPers, complaining that the liberals are attacking them.

00:32:03.900 Oh, why are you attacking us? Are you attacking Doug Ford?

00:32:06.460 No, like the strategy here has to be put the other one in the ground so you can be the anti-Doug Ford candidate.

00:32:12.860 And they have both singularly failed to do that.

00:32:16.140 Maybe that liberal policy of a buck a ride is designed to bring over soft NDP voters.

00:32:21.300 It's not a bad idea if it works.

00:32:23.040 We'll see what happens in some of the transit-heavy Toronto seats that the liberals need to win back from the NDP.

00:32:29.360 That's what I'm going to be most interested in on Election Day, is what does a seat like St. Paul's do?

00:32:34.380 What does a seat like University of Rosedale do?

00:32:36.300 Can the liberals reclaim some of those central Toronto seats that, by rights, they think are theirs,

00:32:43.520 and that there are essential building blocks for them to move back into an important stop?

00:32:49.240 But they've both completely failed to do this.

00:32:51.900 They've misidentified their enemy and failed to kill the enemy that they need to.

00:32:56.260 Hey, Mish, I want to get your thoughts on the future of Ontario politics and really the nature of Ontario politics.

00:33:02.880 I think it was assumed for the longest time that the province is becoming increasingly leftward, moving on a leftward tilt.

00:33:09.200 And we had in our heads the idea that this was a liberal, natural governing party province,

00:33:14.020 because we just had Kathleen Wynne and, before that, Dalton McGinty in office for, what was it, 15 years?

00:33:18.340 You go, wow, 15 years. That is such a long time.

00:33:21.040 Well, yes and no. The progressive conservatives governed from the 1940s until 1985,

00:33:27.940 when the liberals got in with one term under David Peterson.

00:33:30.420 I mean, they were the big blue machine. They had a lock for decades in this province.

00:33:35.200 And then Mike Harris and Ernie Eaves in for a number of years before Dalton McGinty came in.

00:33:40.000 If Doug Ford wins another majority, is it just, okay, well, this is obviously his last term,

00:33:44.640 and obviously we're going back to Liberal or NDP after that, because, you know, Ontarians don't really tolerate conservatives,

00:33:49.820 or are we seeing something different happen here?

00:33:52.120 So I believe that Ontario's political culture is fundamentally non, it's about people like a certain degree of just managerial competence,

00:34:05.000 and it's not an extreme political culture with big swings, where people like governments that are not massively ambitious.

00:34:17.660 Dalton McGinty government is the reason Dalton got reelected a lot of times.

00:34:20.500 Premier dad, pretty boring, not snazzy.

00:34:23.500 But it's the same style back to Bill Davis and Robarts and all the rest.

00:34:30.120 There's a very much a sort of a middle Ontario voter, whether they live in a regional centre or the suburbs of Toronto,

00:34:37.580 or even in the inner parts of the big cities, that just sort of wants, doesn't want big swings.

00:34:45.000 And they don't want the government to take big swings.

00:34:46.540 They want a government that, they don't want a government that's overly ideological, right?

00:34:52.140 They want a government that's just going to deliver decent quality services, not tax them too much, thank you very much,

00:34:58.840 and generally makes them feel good about themselves.

00:35:01.540 And I think that that is a, that is where the median Ontario voter is.

00:35:08.980 Look, there's some times where people are mad, you know, they threw out Bob Ray in 1995, because the government was a disaster.

00:35:18.380 You know, the Eves government was a sort of tried to do that, but didn't really connect with voters in that way and was thrown out.

00:35:28.380 And when the cost of living got too bad and the Wynn government began to look too ideological and too much of a mess,

00:35:34.460 they threw that government out in a big way four years ago.

00:35:37.860 So, I think there's this, this strand of Ontario managerial, let's not be too, let's not overdo it kind of government,

00:35:48.040 which is appealing and they will vote for it until it's been there, been in too long,

00:35:52.600 they will continue to vote for a party that delivers that.

00:35:55.580 And I think the foreign government is, is on track to do that right now.

00:35:59.440 And, you know, they're not too fussed about which party it is that does it,

00:36:04.840 especially with its choice between Liberals and Conservatives.

00:36:08.780 NDPers are seen as still a little bit of too exotic for large chunks of the 905,

00:36:13.580 which makes it very difficult for them to win government.

00:36:16.700 Hamish, I think we've just done it.

00:36:18.080 I think we have shown that this is not, in fact, an election about nothing,

00:36:21.020 and that there's a lot of interesting undercurrents going on in Ontario after all right now.

00:36:26.020 I think, I think there's some stuff, yeah.

00:36:27.580 But thanks so much for joining us.

00:36:29.440 For this conversation today, much appreciated.

00:36:31.860 My pleasure.

00:36:32.740 All the best.

00:36:34.060 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:36:36.300 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:36:37.440 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:36:41.420 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:36:43.840 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

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00:36:55.520 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - May 30, 2022

What Doug Ford has that Jason Kenney doesn’t

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